The present invention relates to a hand-held fastening tool.
Hand-held fastening tools have long been known. The most common of such tools are the screw-driver and the box wrench. However, where the fastening element such as the screw-driver blade or the socket of the box wrench is carried by the tool at the axial end thereof it was frequently difficult to develop sufficient leverage to drive the fastening element to either secure the fastening means or to dislodge same and resort was had to the use of two different tools. Also, such tools are generally designed to accept one type of fastening element which may be a screw-driver blade or socket wrench. It is often desirable to have a tool which is capable of accepting two or more of such fastening elements such as a screw-driver adapted to function cooperably with both Phillips head screws and the straight slatted screws. It is also inconvenient to have a tool which is operable only from one end since there are times when because of space requirements it would be handy to have a tool in which the fastening element can be secured at a different location of the tool. There does not appear to be any such hand tool presently available. U. S. Pat. No. 1,743,505 issued Jan. 14, 1930 discloses a hand-held tool capable of accepting both screw-driver blades and wrench sockets, and of increasing the torque at the operative end of the tool; however, the fastening element may only be secured at one end of the tool and, therefore, does not afford the total versatility described above for combined leverage and rotation.